However, notwithstanding Rollier’s confidences, Fabre had deferred rather than definitely abandoned the execution of his project. Since his impecuniosity was the only obstacle to the realisation of his wishes, could he not seek to uplift himself, as others had done, by daring and willing? In the meantime was it not better to make a great effort in this direction than to remain for ever sunk in the material anxieties and ungrateful tasks of the lycée?
The question as to how to free and simultaneously uplift himself exercised the mind of Fabre at this time.
And what was I to do now [he writes] to overcome the difficulty mentioned by my inspector and confirmed by my personal experience? I would take up industrial chemistry. The municipal lectures at Saint-Martial placed a spacious and fairly well-equipped laboratory at my disposal. Why not make the most of it? [[191]]
The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder. The farmer supplied the raw material to the factories, where it was turned into purer and more concentrated products. My predecessor had gone in for it and done well by it, so people said. I would follow in his footsteps and use the vats and furnaces, the expensive plant which I had inherited. So to work.
What should I set myself to produce? I proposed to extract the colouring-substance, alizarin, to separate it from the other matters found with it in the root, to obtain it in the pure state and in a form that allowed of the direct printing of the stuffs, a much quicker and more artistic method than the old dyeing process.
Nothing could be simpler than this problem, once the solution was known; but how tremendously obscure while it had still to be solved! I dare not call to mind all the imagination and patience spent upon endless endeavours which nothing, not even the madness of them, discouraged. What mighty meditations in the sombre church! What glowing dreams, soon to be followed by sore disappointment when experiment spoke the last word and upset the scaffolding of my plans! Stubborn as the slave of old amassing a peculium for his enfranchisement, I used to reply to the check of yesterday by the fresh attempt of to-morrow, often as faulty as the others, sometimes the richer by an improvement; and I went on indefatigably, for I, too, cherished the indomitable ambition to set myself free. [[192]]
Should I succeed? Perhaps so. I at last had a satisfactory answer. I obtained, in a cheap and practical fashion, the pure colouring-matter, concentrated in a small volume and excellent for both printing and dyeing. One of my friends took up my process on a large scale in his works; a few calico-factories adopted the produce and expressed themselves delighted with it. The future smiled at last; a pink rift opened in my grey sky. I should possess the modest fortune without which I must deny myself the pleasure of teaching in a university. Freed of the torturing anxiety about my daily bread, I should be able to live at ease among my insects.[8]
To these delights of industrial chemistry, the mistress of her problems and rich in future promise, were added, by an additional stroke of good fortune, the flattering congratulations and encouragement of the Minister Duruy and the Emperor Napoleon.[9] It seemed as though, after struggling long against the tide, his frail vessel had a fair wind astern; it seemed about to come into port; surely at last his utmost desires were about to be realised!
Once home amidst my family, I felt a mighty load off my mind and a great joy in my heart, [[193]]where rang a peal of bells proclaiming the delights of my approaching emancipation. Little by little, the factory that was to set me free rose skywards, full of promises. Yes, I should possess the modest income which would crown my ambition by allowing me to descant on animals and plants in a university chair.
“Well, no,” said Fate, “you shall not acquire the freedman’s peculium; you shall remain a slave, dragging your chain behind you; your peal of bells rings false!”
Hardly was the factory in full swing, when a piece of news was bruited, at first a vague rumour, an echo of probabilities rather than certainties, and then a positive statement leaving no room for doubt. Chemistry had obtained the madder-dye by artificial means; thanks to a laboratory concoction, it was utterly overthrowing the agriculture and industries of my district. This result, while destroying my work and my hopes, did not surprise me unduly. I myself had toyed with the problem of artificial alizarin; and I knew enough about it to foresee that, in no very distant future, the product of the chemist’s retort would take the place of the product of the fields.[10]
It was only a step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock. He who but now had discovered Peru was about to feel more keenly than ever the sharp pangs of poverty; he [[194]]whom science and fortune had lately conspired to raise to one of the highest chairs in the University was to be forced to descend from the modest desk of a lycée professor; he whom the friendship and admiration of Duruy had dreamed, it is said, of promoting to the high dignity of tutor to the Prince Imperial[11] was now to be forbidden to teach the schoolgirls of his own Provence!
For it was about this time that “he attempted to found at Avignon a sort of system of secondary education for young girls,” and delivered, in the ancient abbey of Saint-Martial, those famous free lectures which remained so celebrated in the memory of the generation of that period, and at which an eager crowd thronged to hear him, among the most assiduous members being Roumanille, the friend of Mistral, who knew the exquisite secret of weaving into his melodies “the laughter of young girls and the flowers of spring.”
For no one could explain a fact better than Fabre; no one could elucidate it so fully and so clearly. No one could teach as he did, so simply, so picturesquely, yet in so original a fashion. [[195]]
And he had the power of communicating to his hearers his own conviction, his profound faith, the sacred fire that inspired him, the passion which he felt for all natural things.
But there were sufficient reasons to set the sectarians all agog and excite the rancour of the envious, some regarding this great novelty of placing the natural sciences within reach of young girls as a heresy and even a scandal, others finding it unsatisfactory that this “irregular person, the child of his own solitary studies, should fill, by his work, his successes, and the magic of his teaching, a place so apart and so disproportionate. Their cavilling, their underhand cabals, their secret manœuvring won an easy triumph.” In what hateful and tragic fashion we must let him tell us in his own words: